Interpretive Summary: Stickiness on cotton lint from insect excreta disrupts yarn spinning to such an extent that spinning mills avoid purchasing fiber from regions perceived to have infestations. To avoid depressed prices, growers strive diligently to control late season sucking insect populations. Having a treatment that can effectively eliminate stickiness from insect sugars without damaging fiber value in other ways would preserve market value for American cotton if treatments fail to control insects. The material tested holds some promise as it did not damage lint fiber. Unfortunately, for this first trial there was not enough raw material to test the efficacy of the bacteria against this highly variable problem.

Technical Abstract:
Sugars deposited on lint by late season sucking insects can make cotton difficult to spin and difficult to market. This study evaluated a lacto bacillus bacteria strain that metabolizes insect sugars under low moisture conditions. Lint with known levels of stickiness was sprayed with water containing Lalsil Cotton® and compared to untreated material after 20, 59 and 179 days in storage. Stickiness was estimated by recording ends down during ring spinning, with a minicard machine, by high speed stickiness detector and by chemical tests. Fiber properties were tested using high volume instrument and advanced fiber information system machines. Ring spun yarn quality was tested using statimat and evenness machines. Less than 2% moisture was added with treatment. Consequently, no degradation in fiber quality was observed. Stickiness is highly variable and isolated. There simply were not enough samples available to find statistically significant differences by any of the four estimates.